


Stag Parties

by Persephone_Van_Dyke



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Multi, Spoilerific, Stag Night, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Van_Dyke/pseuds/Persephone_Van_Dyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'<i>I can go on all Jack's stag parties in one night!</i>'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stag Parties

**Author's Note:**

> **CAUTION! Contains spoilers for 'The Wedding of River Song'.**
> 
> Not my characters, not making any money from this.

Gerald had completely vetoed the suggestion of a mixed cocktail party, but a moderate celebration, like taking the men of the Torchwood team out to dinner, was deemed "appropriate". He'd turned up, and made a formal little speech after dinner, wishing the groom happiness. Then he'd gone home, and now Jack and the others were off to continue celebrating somewhere much less appropriate.

Getting his coat and hat and gloves in order as he looked around for a cab outside the restaurent, Jack was accosted. Some guy in a suit, with a fluff of dark hair, and a sweet smile.

'Congratulations, Captain,' he'd said. 'Many congratulations.'

'Thanks,' Jack began, trying to place the guy in his memory and drawing a blank. It's been an odd few years, with India, and then the war, and then India again, and now he's finally back in Cardiff and he still can't believe that Elizabeth said yes when he asked her.

'I hope - you'll be very happy.' The man paused, disengaged his hand from Jack's, and then - to his surprised - kissed him on each cheek, in a very French way. Jack's eyes broadened. Not that he minded, but this was Cardiff in 1925, and Taylor and Phillips and Daniel were emerging from the restaurant in a chatty group, and if he'd going to be kissed by handsome men he'd much prefer to do so somewhere private.

But then the guy had vanished round a corner before Jack can ask him his name.

'Jack, _really_ ,' laughed Daniel. 'Time you gave all that up now, surely?'

'Not getting married for another - ooh - eleven hours,' Jack said, checking his watch. 'And I give up chasing men when my wife-to-be does, not before.'

Taylor rolled his eyes. Those two suited each other.

* * *

'Um - um - never have I ever - um - played this game before!' cried the Doctor. Unsurprisingly, the whole table took a drink except him.

'If you're the only one who hasn't, you have to down your drink,' Jack yelled, above the noise.

'Did you just make that rule up?' demanded the Doctor.

'Maybe,' and Jack flashed a half-smile at him.

It turned out - despite a lot of determined questioning - that it's nearly impossible to get the Doctor to drink.

*

'What do you mean, "sex pollen doesn't even exist"?' Gwen demanded.

'If he told you it did, he's lying,' insisted the Doctor. 'So, no, I have never had sex while under the influence of sex pollen.'

*

'The sonic totally _does_ have a vibrating setting, though, right?' Amy whispered in his ear.

'Not everyone has as dirty a mind as you, Pond.'

*

'No, I _haven't_!' spluttered the Doctor. 'Really, Sexy and me don't have that sort of relationship!'

'That's not what she told me,' laughed Jack, but he's only doing it to wind the Doctor up.

*

'This is hopeless,' said Rory eventually, looking at the Doctor's untouched drink. 'You've never done _anything_ , have you?'

A smooth voice across the table cut in. Leaning over Jack's shoulder, a woman said 'Never have I ever _enjoyed being handcuffed much more than I should have_.'

The Doctor blushed deeply, and reached for his drink. Jack grinned gleefully.

'Hello, sweetie,' said River.

* * *

The fire was burning low on the beach when the Doctor arrived. Sitting in a circle, Jack and his friends and a few current lovers from across the system, were sitting in a circle, or lying back staring up into the fathomless heights of the stars.

The Doctor padded across the sand softly, sat down beside him.

'Hey there,' said Jack, unsurprised. 'You missed the food.'

'I'm all right,' he said.

'There's fruit,' offered Jack, handing him a dish of something like pineapple.

A long silence. They stared out together towards the edge of the sea, where the waves crashed and danced, barely illuminated but for a glimmer of gold where the firelight reflected off the foam.

'Happy?' asked the Doctor.

'Yep.' Jack leaned over, rested his head on the Doctor's shoulder. He's in a deep, meditative mood.

'It's been a while since you got married,' commented the Doctor.

'Got put off.' Jack confessed. 'After Elizabeth - '

'I know,' said the Doctor, softly.

'She died in 1927. And then I couldn't do it again. Cause I'd always know I was going to lose them - '

'And now?'

'I guess I thought it through, and - hey, you know how I was mortal for a bit a while back?'

'Yes.' The Doctor had heard this story, but he's dodging through Jack's timeline, obstinately fast, and Jack could be forgiven for not being sure where they are.

'I realised then - I decided, I don't want to miss things. Even the heartbreaking bits. And - ' he turned towards the Doctor. 'Nothing is forever, but there's good things right now, yeah?'

The Doctor swallowed.

'Yes,' he said, fervently. 'Stick with the now, Jack. More than anything my life's taught me that.'

They went quiet again, staring out into dark waves.

Eventualy, the little party dozed off to sleep on the warm sand, ready for the dawn of the next day when they'd dress Jack up, and accompany him with flowers and music to meet his groom up in the hills. The Doctor slipped away.

* * *

The Doctor found himself running across a dark field, after the rapidly disappearing figure of Jack. And just for once, neither of them was in danger.

On the planet of Nex Minor, there's a tradition for stag nights - it's customary for the groom's friends to chase him down in a mock-hunt the night before the wedding. This, apparently, goes back to the time when most Nexian guys, on finding they'd got a girl pregnant, would try to run away. It's largely done for fun now, and the bridesmaids almost never show up to the stag night with weapons to make sure the groom is brought to the ceremony.

Jack has a good start, but the Doctor's got the longer legs, and catches him up first. He tackles Jack clumsily to the floor, and there's a second of entanglement and confusion and breathlessness that is just a little bit homoerotic, before the rest of the raucous, happy band of hunters arrive, and start to cheerfully manhandle the laughing, struggling Jack, tying his wrists so he can't escape, and take him back to the party.

* * *

The Doctor was too late to weigh in before Jack threw the punch.

It was very Jack, to take his friends out to the swankiest place he could find, on a planet where cross-species marriage comes in for bigotry and hatred.

' - marry who the _fuck_ I like!' Jack is yelling, after the retreating backs of the nasty little group who'd shouted biologically graphic insults.

The Doctor's never seen him quite so flaringly angry, and doesn't dare loose his grip on his struggling friend. The guy on Jack's other side is a big, hefty Shamboni lad, otherwise Jack would probably have hurled himself straight back into the fight. As it is, they're seconds away from being thrown out of the hotel.

'Jack,' hissed the Doctor. 'Calm down - !'

Jack sagged suddenly, the fight leaving him. Security guards began to disperse.

'Welcome to Barutros 3,' muttered Jack, savagely, 'we're at war with eighteen other planets, we have a starvation blockade round the entire Minos system, we have legalized torture, and guess what? We get really angry about _sex_.'

'So why get married here?' the Doctor asked, reasonably enough, he thinks, when Jack has the whole galaxy to chose from, and could run away with his lover to anywhere he liked.

Jack stared at him as if the answer was blindingly obvious.

'Because no fucking xenophobe gets to tell me not to love who I love,' he said, simply.

The Doctor shook his head slightly, admiringly.

'Good on you, mate,' was the only thing he could find to say.

* * *

'Doctor!'

'Oh, hullo.'

The Tardis had materialized in this amazing room, some of which was a swimming pool and some of which was a dance floor, and there were lots of luxurious sofas, and right in the middle of it all is Jack, stripped off, his arms round a couple who seemed to be either dancing with him or grinding him, it was hard for the Doctor to tell with his eyes fixed firmly above neck level.

'Come join in! No, hang on - go get a shot and then come join in.'

'I'm not drinking any more tonight - ' the Doctor began, but it wasn't that sort of shot Jack meant. Immune and contraceptive boosts are being done in a corner, by a very beautiful girl in a skimpy nurse outfit, who is having a deliciously toppy time firing the painless shots into the palm of peoples' hands (or elsewhere, for those who have medical kinks and want to play around). It's the 48th century, and safer sex at orgies has gone beyond dishes of gloves and condoms.

'Um - I probably shouldn't - ' the Doctor was almost frozen with embarassment, suffering from the vague feeling that this scene is going to creep into his dreams and wake him up, hot and flustered and aroused, for some time to come. Two beautiful Silurians are entangled on a sofa, their armour divested and stacked beside them. A Felida girl and a human boy are play-fighting avidly. People of every species are swimming, lounging on sofas, dancing. There's a pretty acute shortage of clothes.

Jack disentangled himself politely, kissed the two people he'd been hugging, and came over.

'Hey,' he said, reassuringly. 'You don't have to stay - I know it's not exactly your scene.' A gleam in his eyes says it's very much his scene. Also, the fact that he's definitively hard is a clue, and the Doctor snatches his gaze away from _that_ so fast he almost cricks his neck.

'I'd love to, but - um - got an algebra lesson,' he babbled. 'Rose has just started quadratic equations. Have a nice - um - party, though.'

He paused, glanced around, stepped closer. 'Listen - um - your fiancée does _know_ you're celebrating like this, right?' he asked, conspiratorially.

'Course she does, she's over there,' said Jack, pointing. A beautiful blue girl with long sinuous legs was sprawled joyfully in a sling, while four people were doing creative things with a vibrating toy, warming lubricant, and all her erogenous zones at once.

'Oh.' The Doctor's voice was pitched uncertainly high. 'Good. Well. See you soon.' He clapped Jack distractedly on the shoulder, and bolted into the Tardis. Having flown her to the safety of the Vortex, he disappeared to his bunk before attempting to travel to the next destination.

* * *

'There's a tradition here that the bride gives the groom's family a gift if she's marrying outside her tribe,' Jack explained. 'It's a major thing, and I don't have any relatives I can ask, so - can you be my representative and accept the gift for me?'

'I'd love to,' the Doctor said. Which is how he came to be one of very few people ever to see the sacred bridal dance of the Azure Basin people of Skyhelm, where the music is the laughter of friends and the whole village watches and the smoke rises all night and the bride dances as beautifully as she can, because she's dancing for love.

* * *

'Oh, sorry - I'm late, am I late?'

'Doctor!' Jack sounds relieved. 'I was hoping you'd show up.'

'Jack. You're tied to a lamp-post.'

'Yes, I know.'

'And the feather boa - '

'Yep.'

'And it's quite cold out here, considering - '

' - that I'm otherwise naked, yes, I'd noticed that.'

'Did I miss the party or is this a - you know, a "kinky" thing?' asked the Doctor, adding air-quotes round the word so Jack would know he knew what it meant.

'The faculty of Luna University,' said Jack drily, as the Doctor sonicked the cuffs open with a snap, 'thought it would be _hilarious_ to give me a traditional stag night. What with 20th century Earth history being my subject, and all.'

'Oh.'

Jack winces, stretches his cramped arms. 'I think I've had enough of partying for one night. Can we go get a coffee and catch up?'

'So long as you put on some clothes first.'

* * *

It's a relatively quiet party, this one. The Doctor is a little tired now, it's been a long night for him and he's not used to mixing his drinks. The Tardis touched down softly on grass, and opened out into a garden of some sort, warm shady, twilight just passing into dusk.

For once, there's a dress code that isn't 'clothing optional'. Suits and slinky evening dresses seem to be the rule. Jack is drinking wine, chatting to people, til he sees the Doctor, and comes over.

'Hey, you,' he said, sliding an arm gently round the Doctor's waist, and leaning in to kiss him on the lips. The hour is late, and there are a few drinks inside him, and this doesn't feel at all scary any more, so the Doctor kisses him back. He mentally classifies it as interesting and fun and maybe something he'd like to do again.

'I thought you were catching an early night?' Jack said, quizzically.

'Was I?' The Doctor frowned. This felt subtly wrong, but Jack smells really nice and his arm against the Doctor's back feels very warm, and he'd quite like to just stand here a little while and enjoy it. 'Why would I be doing that?'

'You said you needed the sleep before - ' Jack is looking at him funny now, seeing for the first tine in the low light that certain details are subtly wrong.

'OK,' he said, gathering his thoughts. 'I was warned about this. You need to leave. Right now.'

'But I've only just arrived - '

' _Seriously_ , Doctor. I hate to do this, but you have to _go_ ,' and Jack's face is intent, slightly fearful.

'But why?' demanded the Doctor.

Jack swallowed, took a deep breath, felt himself teetering on the edge of a terrifying paradox.

'Spoilers,' he said.

*

'So who was that?' asked a passing dignitary, breaking into Jack's lonely reverie as he watched the last fading pulse of the departing Tardis light.

'He doesn't know it yet,' Jack said, softly. 'But that's the guy I'm going to marry tomorrow.'

END


End file.
